One of our favorite reissues and new/old discoveries of last year was the passionate and powerful work of Gerard Manset. We immediately fell hard for his rich and textured songs which showed the more intense side of '60s and early '70s French Pop. So we were immediately intrigued by this collection of songs by Rene Joly when we saw that the orchestration was credited in part to Gerard Manset. But once we listened, it turned out to be Joly's voice that grabbed our attention right away. Full of drama, fire and beauty we couldn't believe that this was the first time his amazing voice had made it into our ears. It made us think of what Antony & The Johnsons might have sounded like if they were from France in 1970, or maybe Bryan Ferry doing Edith Piaf covers.
Even some of our friends who grew up in France had not heard of Joly so we don't feel quite as bad for not hearing him until now. How glad we are that this gem of French orchestral psychedelic pop has finally risen to the surface, brought to us by the same label that brought us the great Pop Made In France compilation highlighted last time. Prog fans will even want to check this out for the great King Crimson cover "La Cour Du Roi Musicien" (The Court Of The Crimson King). Majestic sounds filled with cinematic flair, and bubbling with grandeur and rich color. Joly's commanding voice sweeps us off our feet every time we listen. Highly recommended!
Album number two for San Francisco kraut groove channelers, Jonas Reinhardt, who continue to mine krautrock, prog and cosmic gold with their spaced out and now sometimes even rocking sound. Powers Of Audition finds JR mastermind Jesse Reiner opening up his project as a full fledged band with members of Mi Ami, Trans Am and 3 Leafs hopping on board. While the sound is still very much steeped in the same sort of kosmiche aura as their debut, there are new sides to Jonas Reinhardt that have emerged with this sophomore outing. A few tracks even get very uptempo and rocking, like "Atomic Bomb Living" which sounds like some awesome lost car chase theme from a John Carpenter movie or a Giorgio Moroder score from the late '70s, and we for sure hear the contribution of Trans Am's Phil Manley there, as its a track that would have been right at home on one of those great Trans Am records like Futureworld or the Red Line. Meanwhile, title track "Powers Of Audition" is full on new-Neu done so spot on, motorik and and so totally entrancing. We even hear a bit of the soaring sound of Citay which makes sense as Reiner was once a member of that band. There are also more prog undertones that bring to mind Jesse's other old band Crime In Choir. But it's still the more spaced out, kosmiche side of the group that hits the hardest. One of the few modern groops worthy of carrying on the tradition of Conrad Schnitzler, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Goblin, Manuel Gottsching, and Cluster. So damn good!
Two new killer tracks from one of our favorite modern day kosmiche music crews, Jonas Reinhardt. Before we get to the music we got to say the vinyl itself is pretty fucking cool, both sides have etchings on them and side A is pressed as a 7" to be played at 45rpm, and side B is cut as a 10" to be played at 33rpm, but ON A 12". Ok, now that we got that out of the way we can also geek out on how great the music is.
If it's possible this might be the most intergalactic and spaced out Jonas Reinhardt offering yet, as the synths pulsate and glide with other dimensions on their mind. Channeling Klaus Schulze and Manuel Gottsching, in a spirit similar to other kosmisce explorers we love like Expo 70, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Emeralds. We dig that for how cosmic and baked these tracks sound, there is also a sense of song writing and structure within the grooves that really makes it a record you just want to flip over and over, dazed and blissed out by the these sweet sounds...
Import, limited to 500 copies.
Blimey, here's a "best of" from an early '70s UK prog band we'd never even heard of before, but we are now firm fans of (these nine tracks, at least). Ah, thank the gods for cd reissues and anthologies like this one, catching us up with worthy obscurities from way back when. Nothin' dusty here, as Jonesy kicks out some vigorous, vibrant, jazzy tunage all across this disc, offering up selections from their three albums (No Alternative '72, Keeping Up '73, and Growing, also '73) featuring searing horns, hard-charging guitars, melodic vocals -- and full-on mellotron abuse. The opening cut, "1958" sets the tone, and comes off sort of like Lalo "Mission Impossible" Schifrin meets Caravan. Meanwhile, at the far end of the disc, the wah-wah trumpet stylings of the 11+ minute "Jonesy" remind us the heck of '70s Miles, cool. And in-between, there's lots to like as well. It's propulsive stuff, energetic and superbly played, less about show-offy compositional complexifications (though there's enough of that to keep it prog!) or pretentious concepts (no Lord Of The Rings fantasies from these guys) than wild soloing combined with solid groove.
The liner notes cite such influences and/or comparisons as King Crimson and Nucleus, and they'd be right about those two for sure... we might suggest a little early Chicago as well (hey Chicago's first album is pretty killer, trust us!). Amon Duul II and Neu! are also mentioned, but we can't quite see exactly how those krautrockers can be heard here. But we'd agree that the grooviness and experimentation of Jonesy give them something of a Continental character.
As "prog" becomes more and more the "in" thing (hadn't you noticed?), the time is certainly right for a band like Jonesy to get some posthumous props. We'd suggest, ferinstance, that fans of Crime In Choir should investigate forthwith.
Hot damn! No sophomore slump here, Justice return with a fucking cool follow up to their awesome debut from four years ago. Audio, Video, Disco finds the group pushing in a much proggier / poppier direction, in fact everytime we listen to this it sounds more and more like an amazing combination of Daft Punk and Rush, in the best possible way. A little less four on the floor and in your face than the debut, but with much better actual songwriting. In fact there are parts of this record that rival the ecstatic pop of folks we love like Cut Copy and Hot Chip, but instead of pulling from '80s pop bands for inspiration we get the feeling Justice has been listening to as much Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, and Queen as they have dance bangers since they released their debut. It serves them so well, as their sound now seems to have a more expansive reach, without losing the immediacy and intensity that made us first fall in love with them. There's even an awesome reference to the great CSNY song "Ohio" on here. But don't worry the record still packs a dynamite dance floor punch!
Super exciting to see a group who got tons of attention and popularity, not play it safe and make the same record twice but instead push themselves and come out with something different yet still totally rewarding.
Aussie prog reissued.
The Kalevala is the Finnish national mythological epic, and thus no surprise this '70s prog/boogie band hails from Finland. Yes that's right, we said prog/boogie. And Finland. Wonder if Itavalya are fans? There's two LPs reissued here on this single cd, the band's 1972 debut People No Names, and their 1975 follow-up Boogie Jungle. Of the two, well, you can maybe guess which is the best...
People No Names is simply a crazed hard rockin' prog behemoth, kicking ass and taking names (no names?). The nine-minute title track doesn't hold back the rapid-fire changes, the ripping guitars, the jazzy grooves, the weirdly gruff vocals...it's wild stuff!! The other cuts here veer from instrumental shred to folky melodiousness to heavy psychedelic jamming, oftentimes all at once! Not for those with no tolerance for wackiness, though. The countryish hoedown "Tamed Indians" will see to that...
Record number two, which appeared three years later, after the band broke up and reformed with a new line-up (including a new vocalist), is a bit more of an ordinary, less-prog, more Jimi Hendrix-y affair. Still wacky though. And, of course, they've gone BOOGIE big time. Some will find this just too ridiculous but we're having wonderful nostalgic flashbacks to a '70s rock n' roll Finland we never actually experienced.
Interesting note: Liner notes that reveal the band's original name was Vietnam, which didn't fly with concert promoters at the time, hence the change...
Another note: one annoyance is that Walhalla did that annoying thing labels so often do when they put out 2-on-1 cds, trying to cram both album's covers on one panel of the cd booklet rather than giving each cover a panel. Pet peeve #294,391.
You know avant-violinist Eyvind Kang from his several discs for John Zorn's Tzadik label, and/or his work with the likes of Ikue Mori, Bill Frisell, Dying Ground, Joe McPhee, Secret Chiefs 3, and the Sun City Girls, right? Indeed, you probably recall that Kang's extended violin improvisation was a highlight of the SCG's "300,003 Crossdressers From Beyond The Rig Veda", one of their best albums. Well here's more of Kang's violin, backed by a group called the 'Neti-Neti Band' who may or may not be those selfsame Sun City Girls. Four tracks, over an hour of quiet, beautifully droning, melodic violin-based instrumental soundscapes. A bit King Crimson-ish, we'd say. Quite nice. Track three, "Highlands", gets a bit noisier than what came before, but is still quite pretty. Sure does sound like the Sun City Girls, in a trance-y mode.
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Recorded in 1970, these sessions represent a sort of "prequel" to what would eventually become AQ fave Japanese psych act Flower Travellin' Band. Having cut one record as Yuya Uchida and the Flowers, this line up brought in Joe, the inimitable vocalist whose trademark sound did much to make the band stand out from the pack and organist/pianist Kuni Kawachi from another sixties band The Happenings Four. While Kawachi never made the cut, for whatever reason, for the final group that would later record FTB debut Anywhere, his Hammond organ grumblings add a nice touch to the tracks here. In addition to Kawachi's organ, singer Joe plays his harmonica more than he did on later recordings, giving these recordings a bluesier sound. While we're not going to fool you into thinking this is anything near as great as Satori or even Made In Japan, it's got some great heavy psychedelic jams that are certainly as great as anything they did for their first album. And for those who were turned off by Anywhere due to its consisting entirely of covers, it will be comforting to know that the tracks here are all originals. If anything, they are a lot closer to what ended up on Satori, albeit a great deal more primordial and lacking the taughtness of their later works.
Back in 2001 we reviewed two simultaneously-released albums by a really strange death metal / prog rock / new age collison of a band called Maudlin Of The Well. Perhaps you remember them, they were pretty great and weird, and hard to figure out. Now, two years later, Maudlin Of The Well are back in the guise of Kayo Dot. Not sure why they changed their name, it must have had something to do with signing to John Zorn's Tzadik label. Yes, they're on Tzadik -- their avant-garde dreams come true! John Zorn is their buddy now! But it's clearly the same band. And if anything, better and more bizarre than before. Imagine an epic combination of Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Radiohead's OK Computer, Neurosis or Tarantula Hawk, and Faith No More circa Angel Dust (Kayo Dot's singer definitely has some sort of crush on Mike Patton)!! The heavy parts are HEAVY, the pop stuff nicely poppy, the dreamy stuff way dreamy and delicate. Music to float along with, or dive down deep into. The dense heavy sections approach Boris or Pelican levels, with screams buried beneath the din...then it'll break down into a piano interlude or Frippish guitar solo. The most avant black metal acts also would appear to be part of Kayo Dot's listening diet. An unusual Tzadik release to be sure -- even with the chamber strings and jazz horns and prog moves and psychedelically noisy parts, this has a core of both pop and metal that ironically makes this one of the *most* experimental releases on the label! Recommended.
Hot on the heels of the excellent "solo" album from Kayo Dot frontman Toby Driver we reviewed last list, comes this new opus from Kayo Dot proper. They've moved from Tzadik to metalcore label Robotic Empire, but Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue is no less avant-garde than previous KD output, that's for sure (you ought to be able to tell that just by the title, eh?). A confusing, crushing blend of Godspeed, Neurosis, John Zorn, Amber Asylum, Oxbow... Kayo Dot's apparent points of reference make for a mysterious listen. It's chamber-prog rock, it's metal, it's melodic and mysterious, with cryptic lyrics softly intoned amidst the creepy, ambient beauty, marred (not really) by violent outbursts of claustophobic heaviness, when and if the track builds to such a climax... Or marred by jazzy saxophone solos, there's that too. You can tell why John Zorn likes 'em! Actually, sax only surfaces significantly on "Aura On An Asylum Wall" which also has some of the album's most brutal blasting passages to make up for all that jazziness. There's also rumbling percussion and droning strings and sensitive singing and long stretches of ominous, dark, weighty quietude -- track lengths reach up to 18 minutes and are often more soundscapey than anything "song-structured". It's about as experimental as you can get and still appear on a nominally "metal" label.
Not sea shanty, but space shanty. Great title for a space rock record, right? And this 1972 album, newly reissued on cd with two bonus tracks, is definitely space rock - there's even a crazy looking space ship on the cover. But how come it's not called Space Shanties? There's eight tracks here after all, including the bonus ones. Anyway this is a classic, classic prog record, the first and only album from the UK's Khan, a band formed by guitarist Steve Hillage, just prior to his stint with those self-proclaimed "pot-head pixies" of the planet Gong. While Hillage is probably best known for playing in Gong after Khan passed on, he also had a successful post-Gong solo career as a prog rock guitar hero, and later found favor with the trance/techno/ambient crowd in the '80s and '90s. But you don't have to be down with The Orb or The Ozrics to enjoy this album! And actually, Aquarius customers just as likely might know Hillage from his appearance in an even earlier, college-daze outfit, the obscure but beloved heavy psych act Arzachel. Khan, while more polished and "pro", isn't that far off from Arzachel, really, at least in terms of the amount of psychedelic guitar action and organ jamming going on. Also, another ex-member of Arzachel appears in Khan, keyboardist Dave Stewart (not the Eurythmics fellow, but the guy who founded mathy proggers Egg, and later on played in Hatfield and the North).
So... in brief, Khan's a mixture of gentle, Pink Floydian atmospheres, Canterbury style organ burble, and hard rockish guitar power, with song titles like "Stranded (Effervescent Psychonovelty No.5)", "Mixed Up Man Of The Mountains", and "Stargazers". Being prog, the instrumental parts are paramount, but also look out for cool spacey lyrics like "Starstruck moonman looks so blind/You're still a slave within your mind". It's very of its era, that's for sure! Excessively prog, but in the best way. The songs are all longer than your typical pop single of course, though none break into the double digits minutes-wise. And, importantly, it's all very melodic, the singing expressing much majestic emotion, as does Hillage's searing acid rock guitar leads and the driving organ grooves of Stewart. At times we're reminded of Atomic Rooster, at others Van Der Graaf Generator, and at still others of Caravan... so a definite AQ prog recommendation, all right.
Live 1969 Crimson, the original line-up. You get a couple of versions of "20th Century Schizoid Man" but also tons of great improvisation. Packaged in a keen cardboard box, with a thick full-color booklet of reminisces.
We didn't expect that this new Crimson disc, some sort of pre-album ep of new songs, mixes, and acoustic versions, would be all that great. But you can always hope. Well, so much for hope. This includes "Larks Tongues In Aspic Part VI" but a better title would be "Larks Tongues In Aspic Part Suck". The King Crimson line-up listed here consists of Fripp, Belew, somebody, and somebody else. No Bruford or Levin (we mention, for those that care). But it seems that this must also include uncredited contributions from Stone Temple Pilots, Blues Traveler, and some vocoder vocals from a bunch of Battlestar Galactica Cylons. Yuch. Must have been touring with Tool that got Fripp & Co. thinking they needed more of a "modern rock" sound. It's not all bad, but it's a mess. There are a few moments of Frippertronics on here, but in this context they sound weak and New Agey... How 'bout they start working on "Happy With Never Making An Album Again 'Cause We've Totally Lost The Plot"? Just a suggestion. Sorry to be so harsh, but even the biggest Crim/Fripp fans we know were disappointed.
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Debut from Robert Fripp & Company. Mini-LP sleeve version (with that great, disturbing cover painting).
"The King Crimson Collectors Club" (god, what's gotten into them?) presents: "Ladies of the Road", a double cd of live Crimson from 1971-72. While oddly enough it doesn't actually have their song "Ladies of the Road" on it, it's a powerful document of Crimson's unique insane math-rock jazz-prog from an underrated, underdocumented era and lineup of Crimson (circa their album "Islands" and the recently reissued live disc "Earthbound") that was definitely being influenced by American R&B and jazz, moreso than the classical elements prominent in the original Crim of 69-70.
Did we get the word jazz in there? This is VERY jazz, with lots of Mel Collins' saxophone all over the place, along with of course Robert Fripp's unmistakable guitar genius. The songs and improvs presented here are in part and together gorgeous, heavy, pretty, crazed, gentle, funky (!), psychedelic, smooth, noisy, intense, and (of course) schizophrenic. Speaking of which, the second disc in this set, entitled "Schizoid Men", is a mammoth edited-together collection of NOTHING BUT THE GUITAR AND SAX SOLOS from a whole bunch of live performances of "21st Century Schizoid Man"! Yes, fifty-some energetic minutes worth. As Fripp says in the liner notes: "King Crimson has often been accused of a capital offence in the annals of Prog Crime: the endless guitar solo. Who cares that prosecutors had not listened to the band? Schizoid Men is one approach to offering a plea of guilty, on the basis of manipulated evidence long after the events. Extended soloing by Mel Collins is not, in my book, any kind of crime at all. Rather, an instruction in performance by a young master." Not to mention, humble man he is, his own extended soloing... Pretty cool, actually, really way out there. We were playing it in the store, and one of our more avant-garde and drunken customers, who claims not to like Crimson, even felt compelled to buy it.
So, after last list's panning of the new 2002 Crimson effort, here's a nice (sad too, I suppose) reminder of how great (and different) they once were. Maybe Fripp ought to take a close listen... By the way, this has really good live sound, not like a shitty bootleg!
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Mini-LP sleeve version.
Fripp & crew live in concert, 1973. Fine sound (a portion of this was overdubbed for use on Starless And Bible Black), great music, plenty of beyond-prog improvisation.
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Mini-LP sleeve packaged version of this essential Crim album. A must-have, certainly, for fans of Don Cab!!
You'd think it would be easy to write reviews of records you love, but it's not, not always anyway. This band, though, makes the task easier, 'cause maybe we can just say a few key words: JAPAN. DOOM. PSYCH. CRAZY. Uh... is that doing the trick? Tokyo trio King Goblin, who describe themselves as a "progressive space psychedelic death rock band", definitely have that "anything goes", totally WTF?! Japanese thing going for 'em, mixing up prog and punk and funk and metal and noise whatever else they want, you know what we mean if you have albums by bands like Boredoms, Melt Banana, Children Coup D'Etat, Space Streakings, Omoide Hatoba, Green Milk From The Planet Orange, and others of that ilk in your collection. Specifically, though, the Japanese bands that King Goblin most especially make us think of are CSSO, Solar Anus, and Sigh (circa Imaginary Sonicscape). Somehow melding gonzo grind and druggy doom, plodding heaviness and catchy grooves, the nine strange songs here bouncing from spaced out acid rock to lumbering funk, with rubbery bass, squiggly guitar, gruff guttural vocals, and, as it says here, "hand craps" (sorry if it's not PC to chuckle over that particular credit in the cd booklet!).
Imagine if retro-disco-doomsters Cathedral got even weirder than they already are now, turned Japanese, and went no wave... that might approximate the dizzying extreme entertainment offered up by King Goblin. Also, how can songs with titles like "Boiled Again (Born To Ride)" and "Motordead" not be entertaining?
This disc, their debut, actually dates from 2007, but we only discovered 'em recently, and got some copies directly from Japan as quick as we could. They're working on a new album, to be entitled Cryptozoology, but unfortunately the guitarist of King Goblin is currently suffering from some unspecified, serious illness, so that's delaying things. Hopefully he gets better soon!! However, a couple of the King Goblin guys are also in wicked sick grindcore band called AKBK, who have a brand new album out that smokes, so look out for us to list that, soon!
Most people probably know Arthur Brown, if at all, as the leader of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, kind of a one-hit wonder in the UK and the US with their 1968 single "Fire". But I remember a few years ago somebody playing me a '70s vintage LP by Arthur Brown, and it was a pretty amazing, freaked out space rock artifact. I'm pretty sure it was one of these three Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come records that have just been reissued, remastered with bonus cuts -- although next to "amazing" I'd also have to use the word "ridiculous" 'cause these sure are some gonzo, over the top examples of early '70s rock excess. The story goes that after his "I am the God of Hellfire" 15 minutes of f(l)ame, Arthur's Crazy World broke up, and then he eventually regrouped with this band, who were dedicated to an altogether heavier, more guitar-oriented sort of showmanship, from dark psych-prog to simply silly music hall theatrics. Brown was capable of some incredible vocal stylings, from Tom Jones worthy croonery to sheer sheer manaical dramaturgy, and he demonstrates that full range on these discs, coming across a bit like early Alice Cooper (who may in turn have been influenced by Brown originally). Totally wigged out and acid fried, chaotic and confused. What they're trying to get across is hard to say, but if you delight in both failed genius and '70s hippy zaniness, then Arthur Brown is your new prog rock hero.
Galactic Zoo Dossier, from '71, was the first of the three Kingdom Come albums. You'll note that it was good enuff for a present-day psych fanzine to be named after it. A classic of sorts. Then came 1972's self-titled Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come record, whose contents, according to the liner notes, were affected by the band's communal living situation and increased LSD consumption. It's a little more disjointed than the first record but it does contain the "Traffic Light Song" which was both a pop psychology metaphor for personality types and an excuse for the band to wear traffic light costumes on stage as part of their increasingly bizarre live show. Last comes 1973's Journey, which may be the best of the three, or at least the weirdest, because rather than a human drummer, Journey features electronic drum machine rhythms programmed by Brown himself. Apparently the drummer on the previous two albums ran off with the bass player's wife! So they went with a drum machine, quite an unusal lark back in 1973 for sure! (And we thought that the Metal Urbain album was ahead of its time!). Crudely, it's kind of a collision of psychedelia and new wave and it's pretty cool. Though, all three discs have proto new wave elements alongside the space-rock and Zappa-ish tomfoolery. So, even now Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come isn't like anything else you've really ever heard (although whether the band was "good" or not is another, very subjective matter). Be brave and investigate!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Most people probably know Arthur Brown, if at all, as the leader of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, kind of a one-hit wonder in the UK and the US with their 1968 single "Fire". But I remember a few years ago somebody playing me a '70s vintage LP by Arthur Brown, and it was a pretty amazing, freaked out space rock artifact. I'm pretty sure it was one of these three Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come records that have just been reissued, remastered with bonus cuts -- although next to "amazing" I'd also have to use the word "ridiculous" 'cause these sure are some gonzo, over the top examples of early '70s rock excess. The story goes that after his "I am the God of Hellfire" 15 minutes of f(l)ame, Arthur's Crazy World broke up, and then he eventually regrouped with this band, who were dedicated to an altogether heavier, more guitar-oriented sort of showmanship, from dark psych-prog to simply silly music hall theatrics. Brown was capable of some incredible vocal stylings, from Tom Jones worthy croonery to sheer sheer manaical dramaturgy, and he demonstrates that full range on these discs, coming across a bit like early Alice Cooper (who may in turn have been influenced by Brown originally). Totally wigged out and acid fried, chaotic and confused. What they're trying to get across is hard to say, but if you delight in both failed genius and '70s hippy zaniness, then Arthur Brown is your new prog rock hero.
Galactic Zoo Dossier, from '71, was the first of the three Kingdom Come albums. You'll note that it was good enuff for a present-day psych fanzine to be named after it. A classic of sorts. Then came 1972's self-titled Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come record, whose contents, according to the liner notes, were affected by the band's communal living situation and increased LSD consumption. It's a little more disjointed than the first record but it does contain the "Traffic Light Song" which was both a pop psychology metaphor for personality types and an excuse for the band to wear traffic light costumes on stage as part of their increasingly bizarre live show. Last comes 1973's Journey, which may be the best of the three, or at least the weirdest, because rather than a human drummer, Journey features electronic drum machine rhythms programmed by Brown himself. Apparently the drummer on the previous two albums ran off with the bass player's wife! So they went with a drum machine, quite an unusal lark back in 1973 for sure! (And we thought that the Metal Urbain album was ahead of its time!). Crudely, it's kind of a collision of psychedelia and new wave and it's pretty cool. Though, all three discs have proto new wave elements alongside the space-rock and Zappaish tomfoolery. So, even now Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come isn't like anything else you've really ever heard (although whether the band was "good" or not is another, very subjective matter). Be brave and investigate!
Most people probably know Arthur Brown, if at all, as the leader of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, kind of a one-hit wonder in the UK and the US with their 1968 single "Fire". But I remember a few years ago somebody playing me a '70s vintage LP by Arthur Brown, and it was a pretty amazing, freaked out space rock artifact. I'm pretty sure it was one of these three Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come records that have just been reissued, remastered with bonus cuts -- although next to "amazing" I'd also have to use the word "ridiculous" 'cause these sure are some gonzo, over the top examples of early '70s rock excess. The story goes that after his "I am the God of Hellfire" 15 minutes of f(l)ame, Arthur's Crazy World broke up, and then he eventually regrouped with this band, who were dedicated to an altogether heavier, more guitar-oriented sort of showmanship, from dark psych-prog to simply silly music hall theatrics. Brown was capable of some incredible vocal stylings, from Tom Jones worthy croonery to sheer sheer manaical dramaturgy, and he demonstrates that full range on these discs, coming across a bit like early Alice Cooper (who may in turn have been influenced by Brown originally). Totally wigged out and acid fried, chaotic and confused. What they're trying to get across is hard to say, but if you delight in both failed genius and '70s hippy zaniness, then Arthur Brown is your new prog rock hero.
Galactic Zoo Dossier, from '71, was the first of the three Kingdom Come albums. You'll note that it was good enuff for a present-day psych fanzine to be named after it. A classic of sorts. Then came 1972's self-titled Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come record, whose contents, according to the liner notes, were affected by the band's communal living situation and increased LSD consumption. It's a little more disjointed than the first record but it does contain the "Traffic Light Song" which was both a pop psychology metaphor for personality types and an excuse for the band to wear traffic light costumes on stage as part of their increasingly bizarre live show. Last comes 1973's Journey, which may be the best of the three, or at least the weirdest, because rather than a human drummer, Journey features electronic drum machine rhythms programmed by Brown himself. Apparently the drummer on the previous two albums ran off with the bass player's wife! So they went with a drum machine, quite an unusal lark back in 1973 for sure! (And we thought that the Metal Urbain album was ahead of its time!). Crudely, it's kind of a collision of psychedelia and new wave and it's pretty cool. Though, all three discs have proto new wave elements alongside the space-rock and Zappaish tomfoolery. So, even now Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come isn't like anything else you've really ever heard (although whether the band was "good" or not is another, very subjective matter). Be brave and investigate!
While we know Japanese drummer extraordinaire Tatsuya Yoshida best from his infamous prog-core duo Ruins, it would seem that he's putting most of his copious energy into a different band these days, Koenjihyakkei. Actually Koenjihyakkei have been around for a long time (their first album came out in 1994) but we've always thought of 'em as sort of a Ruins side project, one of many, not Yoshida's main thing. However, now they're up to album number four (2005's Angherr Shisspa) and have just released *another* live DVD (their third! however, the previous two are out of print now) on Yoshida's Magaibutsu label. So they've been busy lately. Meanwhile, it sadly seems like Ruins is on, at the very least, a major hiatus, with nothing heard from that duo since 2002's Tzomborgha.
Of course, Ruins fans are probably also Koenjihyakkei fans. Naturally, since the latter band takes the Ruins' obsession with all things Magma to another level, in part by including keyboards, guitar, operatic female vocals, and woodwinds... it's all very over the top and insane (like Ruins) but, with, like six or eight virtuosos not just two. And it's less "punk" than Ruins sometimes seem, with more prog polish.
Fans (or prospective fans) should be interested in this live dvd, documenting a show at Starpine's Cafe in Tokyo, on May 31st 2007 (hence the title). Besides Yoshida, the lineup includes Yamamoto Kyoko on vocals, Ishibashi Eiko (heard with Yoshida on their recent duo disc Slip Beneath The Distant Tree) on keyboards and flute, Sakamoto Kengo on bass, Komori Keiko on soprano sax and clarinet, and none other than Hoppy Kamiyama on keyboards and vocals. Plus, guests Tsuboy Akihisa on violin and Imahori Tsuneo (from Tipographica, and also the Imahori-Yoshida duo) on guitar. All of 'em of course pretty much slay on their respective instruments and vocal duties. As is made abundantly clear on this disc's first six cuts, which find these musicians improvising in various small groupings. It starts off already in a pretty darn full-on mode, with a herky-jerky Yoshida and equally physical Komori Keiko in a wild duet. Crazy stuff. The second half of the program switches to proper Koenjihyakkei compositions, and (in case you didn't know) we're talking some complex prog bizness here, the utmost in "Zeuhl" stylings, beginning with the title track from Angherr Shisspa. They do two more from that album, and two off of Nivraym, and then for their grand finale, the band do a lively version of "Sunna Zarioki" from the very first Koenjihyakkei album. It's played with a great deal of relish, and the Komori Keiko's rah-rah stage moves are quite cute. Hearing these songs on record is one thing, SEEING and hearing them rip through them live is even more impressive.
There's only one camera, which occasionally zooms in for a (medium) close-up of the action but mainly stays with a full-stage view, getting everybody in. 12 tracks, 100 minutes, all region NTSC.
As with previous Koenjihyakkei (aka Hundred Sights Of Koenji) and Ruins releases, this boasts a bunch of tough to say, impossible to understand titles/lyrics... apparently they're all written in a made up language that's part of band leader Tatsuya Yoshida's characteristic Magma worship ('cause the French proggers he and we love so much did the same thing). So we don't know if "Angherr Shisspa" really means anything or not. But one guess would be "Utterly Crazed". Or how 'bout "Complex Mania"? Or "Mind Boggling"? Something like that would be descriptive of this, the fourth album from the Ruins drummer's amazing Koenjihyakkei ensemble.
There's been some line-up changes this time around. Yoshida remains on drums naturally, and longtime bassist Sakamoto Kengo still holds down the bottom end. But there's a new person on keyboards and an additional new singer as well. And the guitar is totally gone now, replaced with a reed player, who adds a bit of chaotic free jazziness to the mix, though of course Koenjihyakkei's playing and arrangements remain totally tight and technical.
With all five band members credited with vocals, it almost sounds like this could some sort of operatic stage performance, everyone taking the part of a character in some (again, impossible to understand) story. Very dramatic and action-packed though! If you're in the mood for some excessive prog indulgence, just ask for "Angherr Shisspa".
At last!!! We knew we could count on the Skin Graft label. They've finally reissued the amazing, long-out-of-print debut album by Koenjihyakkei (aka Hundred Sights Of Koenji), a crucial "side project" of Japanese spazz-prog faves Ruins. Originally released by the Japanese God Mountain label back in 1994, this is one that any fan of Ruins, or heavy crazed Zeuhl-style prog rock action, MUST HEAR, NOW.
If you're familiar with the Magma-obssessed Tokyo bass and drums duo Ruins, imagine them becoming EVEN MORE Magma-obsessed and adding female vocalist/keyboardist and a guitar player (actually, adding a bass player, as the Ruins bass player nimbly switched to guitar for this). This uber-Ruins quartet then wrote a bunch of insane, gorgeous prog rock tunes (or, in one case, adapted a traditional Bulgarian one, on the track "Yagonahh", surely one of the most incredible reeling hoedowns ever recorded) and play them to dazzling perfection. The French '70s prog band we keep mentioning (Magma) are insane, but not quite this heavy or hyper. If you like Ruins and/or Magma and/or weird prog music, you want to get this if you haven't already. It's probably the best of Koenjikhyakkei's albums, which are all pretty cool... indeed if you've been following our updates and scanning our website, you probably have read our ravings about this band's other releases. And as good as they are, this is the one, that started it all. Sooooo bombastic, so energetic, so exotically catchy. You've likely never heard anything as majestically grandiose and yet as full of stop on a dime frenzies as opener "Ioss", ferinstance. And the whole album is full of that sort of thing. It makes us gleeful just to think about it. Definitely in the top two or three of of all Tatsuya Yoshida related non-Ruins releases sez our resident Japanophile, Allan (don't ask him what the others are though, he'll spend all day agonizing over it).
One kinda curious note to make about this reissue, though: mastermind Yoshida not only remixed it for this reish, but he apparently also RE-RECORDED all his drum tracks! We're pretty sure only he could tell the difference. We really wonder what inaudible-to-others flaws he felt he needed to correct! This new disc seems to be about 12 seconds longer than the original, too, but we couldn't tell ya where/why.
Live concert videos (or dvds) tend to be for fans of the band in question only, though we imagine that if you weren't familiar with operatic Japanese prog monsters Koenjihyakkei and happened to watch this dvd you'd possibly become curious enough to seek out their studio recordings (or not, as this band's brand of hyperactive bombast isn't going to be everyone's cup of extra-caffinated tea). If you're already a fan of Ruins and/or Koenjihyakkei, though, you know what you're getting into here and probably can't wait to watch this. Ruins mastermind Tatsuya Yoshida's heavily Magma influenced (well, he's -always- Magma influenced, but this is to the extreme) combo Koenjiyhyakkei is in fine form here on this dvd, documenting a show they performed at the Tokyo nightclub Doors in August of 2005. There's flashing colored lights and all, but they don't them to be dazzling! Two sets plus an encore, 16 songs/chapters including a medley, shot with two cameras, for a good look at this very tight and energetic band.
Er, is it a sexist comment to mention that we marvel at how Yoshida's managed to get so many cute girls on board to perform his crazy music?? There's a female vocalist, female keyboard player (she sings too), and a female clarinetist/saxophonist (instead of the guitar that this band used to have). Then you've got Yoshida running the show from the drumkit (also singing), and also holding down the bottom end, one of Yoshida's obligatory dexterous rhythm section partners on 5-string electric bass. It's the lineup from their last album Angherr Shisspa, from which a lot of these songs are drawn.
We've been waiting for this for a while (since 1996!) -- at long last, the third album from Japan's Koenjihyakkei (in English, Hundred Sights of Koenji), the massively Magma-minded side project of the almost-as-Magmoid bass and drums duo Ruins. Ruins leader
It's about time! The Skin Graft label does all fans of crazed prog and (to be specific) Japanese band the Ruins a big favor by reissuing this long out of print album by Ruins side-project Koenjihyakkei. Not only is it available again, but it's at a domestic, cheaper price! Yay!
Originally released on Hoppy Kamiyama's God Mountain label in 1996, Viva Koenji!! (also known as II) was the second album from drummer Tatsuya Yoshida's Koenjihakkei unit (aka Hundred Sights Of Koenji, Koenji being the district of Tokyo wherein Yoshida lives). Yoshida, if Allan hasn't yet already indoctrinated you on this truth, is Japan's answer to Christian Vander (French drummer/musical mastermind behind the '70s prog band Magma). Yoshida's well-known main band Ruins is a drum and bass duo heavily influenced by Vander's band, but those influences become even more apparent with this project. Keyboards, operatic male and female vocals, guitar, bass, and drums expand the Ruins palette into a realm of almost symphonic "death progressive" madness. Crazed instrumental prowess, mindboggling changes, utterly heavy and amazing. Pretty much essential to all fans of Ruins or Magma, surpassing both both in some select ways! Those who've only heard this band's later albums, Nivraym and Angherr Shisspa, will be bowled over by how much more HEAVY and intense this disc is even than those (and those records aren't exactly mellow or wimpy!). Seriously.
So if you missed this before, give thanks to Skin Graft! Let's hope that they'll also be adding the first, also now impossible to find, Hundred Sights Of Koenji album to their catalog someday soon too...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
After marvelling (if you're at all of our mindset) at the cover painting, which features some sort of dulcimer, an electric guitar, and an amplifier itself decorated with a painting of a dead tree and a sunset, the first thing that'll grab you about this 1977 Swedish folk-rock reissue is that it's so superbly recorded -- crystal clear, not too slick or over produced, just simply sterling, live-in-your-room sound that belies this album's misty '70s origin. Though ordinarily we find dusty, crackly, low-fi recordings of long-lost folkesque psychedelia to be preferably evocative and mysterious, this just sounds *amazing*. So, your ears will rejoice at how great Kong Lavring sounds...and then, the songs. So good. Kong Lavring made a terrific mix of traditional Norwegian folk music and electric rock instrumentation, with the choppy bite of "Liti Kjersti" being a particularily stellar example of such. With both male and female vocals -- Viking style male choirs chanting it up, and lovely sweet female vocals, capable of exquisite unaccompanied beauty. Though never particularily popular (they made only two albums, of which this is the first), Kong Lavring could be considered a Norwegian version of Fairport Convention, to make a loose comparison. Also recommended for fans of Turid, Kebnekajse, Arbete Och Fritid, and other Scandinavian folk/rock outfits -- perhaps even those of the black metal variety like Storm. The aforementioned cover art suggests a lot to those of us enamoured of the '70s hippy folk vibe, and this disc is indeed as good as the cover portends.
Uh, c'mon, how could this NOT be awesome? Sublime Frequencies never fails us, first off. AND we're already fans of vintage Turkish psych in general, guitarist/vocalist Erkin Koray in particular. So this release, with its excellent eyeballs-shooting-purple-rays-from-space-or-whatever cover painting, was eagerly anticipated at AQ. And yeah it's awesome. As the subtitle says, this consists of singles and rarities circa 1970-'77 from this Middle Eastern psych rock master, founder of "the first underground group of the Orient", a living legend whose career stretches back to the '50s. Rarities? Well, compiler Mark Gergis notes in the liners: "This collection features tracks not found on the many unauthorized Erkin compilations and LP reissues that have emerged in the west over the years." And indeed these eleven tracks were provided to Sublime Frequencies by Koray himself, sourced from his personal vinyl collection! So, listen up, 'cause this is the stuff Erkin wants us to hear, and well, if you're any sort of Turkish psych fan like us, you NEED to hear it. Tracks like "Kendim Ettim Kendim Buldum" and "Hadi Hadi Ordan" are going to make you very happy. Swirling and shimmering, twanging surfy electric saz (or is that oud?), melodic deep droning vocals, bellydancing folk motifs, stirring orchestration, and YES some wild blasts of psychrockguitar distortion, it's the exotic East (lots of East) meets West sort of thing we just love! While some of this is wonderfully moody, a lot of it rocks, all right, ferinstance just crank up "Krallar" (a '75 single from whence that striking cover image comes) with its especially dramatic vocals to match its uptempo urgency.
Digipack cd release for now, with a vinyl version due out in a couple of weeks as well. Is it too much to hope that Sublime Frequencies will get Erkin to undertake a Western tour like labelmate Omar Souleyman, one of these days...?
BACK IN STOCK! Tatsuya Yoshida's Magaibutsu label has at last repressed this second disc from Ruins side-project Korekyojinn. And now, it's got BONUS TRACKS (which may elicit an 'argh' from those who got it already, but that's the facts). They're not listed anywhere on the sleeve, but there are indeed four bonus previously unheard live cuts appended to this disc. FYI, here are the titles: "You Know What You Like", "Careless Heart", "Out Of Head", and "On Reflection".
And here's our review of the original edition:
It's kinda unbelievable, if you think about just how many records Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida has been involved with. Dozens at least. Especially unbelievable since when you check the credits on most things he's played on, it quite often turns out that he wrote *all* the music. A hero to drummers everywhere, eh? He's got to have written literally hundreds of songs. Consider just Ruins albums alone: that's a LOT of music and it's almost all him. Even the larger ensembles he's in, like Koenjihyakkei, he's always the main composer. And, to a fan like me anyway, his stuff is always amazing. It's not a case of quantity over quality, no sirree. He's just a seemingly bottomless well of not just crazy riffs and rhythmic ideas, but songwriting talent (matched with an ability to play like a mofo). So that brings us to this new album, the second release from Yoshida's Korekyojinn band. Here he teams up with a bassist and a drummer, and as you might expect it's a bit like Ruins+1. A bit groovier perhaps, with some classic rock moments riff-wise, and it's all-instrumental. No nutty vocals, just the tricky, twangy guitars of Kido Natsuki, the bulldozering bass of Nasuno Mitsuru, and of course in the driver's seat, the masterful drumming of Yoshida. Eleven more complex compositions from the mind-boggling musical mind of Yoshida, encapsulating Led Zep licks, Hella hyperactivity, and jazz swing... Chances are if you've read this far, you're a Ruins fan, and if you're a Ruins fan, you'll probably want to check this out. But Arabesque would be a fairly accessible place in the pantheon of Yoshida projects to start with, too, if you're not already a convert. An utter prog instrumental monster that never loses the groove despite the chops on hand. Japanese import on Yoshida's own label.
Ruins fans, listen up! Jackson is the fourth cd to be spawned by Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida's ultra-tech Korekyojinn trio, an instrumental mathrock juggernaut that's basically the Ruins +1 (a guitarist added to the bass/drums duo), chugging a six pack of Red Bull, going gonzo and making the likes of Don Cab and Hella seem like mere amateur fumblers (well, not quite -- going for a bit of hyperbole there, but still...). This isn't improv, all these complex cuts are compositions sprung from the sweaty brow of Yoshida and the musical genius mind behind it.
The spazmodic yet precise drumming of Yoshida, the virtuoso guitar playing of Kido Natsuki, and the thick bass rippage of Nasuno Mitsuru as displayed on this disc's hard hitting, smoothly energetic opener "Lebanon" is what we want and expect. You'll be left dizzy and drained before its seven minutes are up. But watch out, there's a dramatic shift of gears when portions of the next track "Jackson" dip into an unfortunately funky style of glitterball fusion. Not sure what they were thinking there... maybe a tongue-in-cheek joke? Thankfully despite being the title track, it's a total anomaly on this album, and with the very next cut "Mindgames", we're back into sheer frenzied insanity of heavy prog mania, though melodiousness isn't neglected, with the bright, folky, infectiously nursery rhymey "Kaleidoscope" standing out in that regard, sounding a bit like something by Yoshida's Tairikutoko vs. Sanmyakuonna band. Mostly this album demonstrates that Korekyojinn are very nearly metal in their shredding capabilities, though of course they sound more like the Ruins than anything else...maybe like Stinking Lizaveta too at times. Which leaves us only to say, wow!
Seeing is believing. Knowing that the music they make is pretty much mindboggling, perhaps that's why Japanese power-prog trio Korekyojinn elected to package their new album as a double disc set, one an audio cd, the other a live dvd, packaged in a slim, dvd-sized case. The dvd portion provides the visual proof of their ability to play like this live, if there were any doubt about it, while fans already convinced of their genius will enjoy watching it over and over while bowing down in front of the screen chanting "we're not worthy". And since this unit hasn't toured much outside of Japan, it's also the only way we can get to see 'em short of springing for a plane ticket to Tokyo!
The cd constitutes Korekyojinn's 5th album, Swan Dive, an album entirely, amazingly improvised by the trio of Mitsuru Nasuno (bass), Natsuki Kido (guitar), and linchpin Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins fame (drums) plus very special guests Uchihashi Kazuhisa and Hoppy Kamiyama, who contribute on guitar and keyboards/vocals, respectively, on two tracks each.
Of course it gets pretty wild, there's only six tracks but they're mostly all loooooong ones, up to 11, 17, and even 24 minutes in length... yet somehow they manage to keep it up, both the energy and creativity, their frenzied improvisations sometimes sounding rather more like the most complex COMPOSED prog rock music you could imagine (Orthrelm?), it's pretty insane. However, their convoluted chaotic outbursts are occasionally tempered by stretches of truly lovely, melodic, momentary mellowness. Melt-Banana meets Mahavishnu???
With herky jerk rhythms and heavy riffing, jazzy tinkling keys (when Hoppy sits in) contrasting with massively distorted electric bass, plus sheer avant-guitar textural shred-grind (the ante on that, upped by Uchihashi), this pretty much rules. As we had no doubt it would, considering who the heck this is (members of Ruins, Altered States, Bondage Fruit, etc.).
On the live dvd (70 minutes, NTSC, all region), they do a dozen songs, mostly from previous albums (though we think a couple, like the title track, are new), all of which we should mention are pieces in fact composed by mastermind Yoshida, NOT improvs. Again, total math-rock madness, very Ruins-esque, but with guitar. We are not worthy!
A lot of the soundtracks we review, are for movies we haven't actually seen. In some ways that's sort of liberating, at least from a purely musical standpoint, hearing the sounds solely for what they are, instead of having those sounds inexorably linked to specific images. And in a lot of cases, we have discovered some incredible films via their soundtracks, and not the more common other way around. We got this soundtrack to this 1981 French horror/thriller (directed by Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, and scored by his longtime collaborator Andrzej Korzynski, also Polish, but more on that in a second) in a few months ago, and instantly, become totally obsessed, spinning it multiple times a day, inevitably folks in the store would ask what it was, because it's so goddamn good. And creepy, and twisted, and pretty much the perfect score, but for what, we weren't sure, as we had not seen the movie. And while are obsession proves that you needn't see the movie to love this, once we actually DID see the movie, we flipped for that too, wondering how the hell we could have missed out on it all these years. It's literally one of the weirdest, most fucked up films EVER. And the soundtrack we had become so familiar with over the last several months, finally viewed in the contest of the film, made both even more bizarre and amazing.
So the film itself, banned until 1991, and at the time classified as a "Video Nasty", stars an American, Sam Neil, who becomes convinced his wife, Isabelle Adjani, is cheating on him, which she is. Neil hires a private investigator, eventually meets the lover, and the lover's mother, but there's so much more to the story, there's a crazily neglected child in the mix, some truly twisted parenting, and SPOILER ALERT!!!! Some sort of super gross oozing monster that lives in an abandoned building that Adjani is in love with, or is at least having sex with? There's tons of screaming and hitting and fighting, and one of thee most dramatic freakouts EVER, with Adjani losing her mind in a tunnel, and ending up spewing and oozing all sorts of weird fluids, there's a particularly psychedelic denouement as well, lots of crazy scenery chewing, the whole thing is utterly and unabashedly over the top. Even right after seeing it, we weren't sure what the fuck just happened. But we did know, we loved the movie, and suddenly, loved the soundtrack EVEN MORE.
Korzynski's soundtrack is a series of short cues, most less than a minute, that find the composer experimenting with synthesizers, drum machines, primitive electronics. It's actually quite progressive, and in places is reminiscent of Carpenter or Goblin, especially in the movie's 'theme'. Check out the opening track "The Night The Screaming Stops", and it will be stick in your head forever, the tense strings, the pulsing rhythmic throb, the mysterious percussion, the swirling synth, and the creepy sci-fi sound effects, not to mention the melody. It's so haunting and creepy, but in the film, it's over the most innocuous sequence, and it's that juxtaposition that makes it so effectively chilling. Seriously if this soundtrack was 2 minutes long, and consisted of that first track, we'd still want a copy!
But dig in, there's plenty more, haunting swoonsome strings, drifting over a lilting organ melody, dreamy and drifty, but so subtly ominous, there's some full on synth prog, again revisiting that opening melody, but with more heft, as the soundtrack unwinds, there's lots of percussion, shakers, little flurries of synth shimmer, deep drones, the orchestral theme is particularly stirring, a refrain of the opening credit sequence, but so much more creepy and hauntingly stately. There are also lots of brief blasts of synthy psychedelia, appropriately titled things like "Detective's Desserts" or "Bloody Embrace", and part of the reason these cues are so short, is that much of the movie is sans incidental music, so the cues come in to accentuate certain events, the sonic equivalent of jump-scares, but super effective, and they add a whole other level of surreal psychedelia to the proceedings, very 'Euro' for sure. The series of "Kreuzberg" variations are particularly freaky, sinister and mysterious, grim ambience and super tense orchestral weirdness. Oh did we mention "The Man With The Pink Socks"? Another perplexing plot point, and one that here gets the bookending closing sequence, revisiting "Meeting With A Pink Tie". Adding some extra wah guitar, and both revisiting that opening theme.
Listen to the sound samples and see if you can resist. But really why bother? You won't be sorry. Even removed from the movie, this score is fantastic, psychedelic, orchestral, proggy, tripped out and bizarre, and no doubt will have you headed to the video store to experience the baffling brilliance of the film, once your sated on the equally baffling and brilliant score.
Like all B-Music / Finders Keepers releases, includes a huge booklet with lots of liner notes and tons of rare photos.
Kosmos is the new group from Michel Langevin (aka Voivod's drummer Away!) deeply inspired by '70s instrumental space prog and vintage sci-fi movies. For the most part it's a cleanly executed journey, but occasionally treads along -- but never into -- the aggressive, thrashy outer limits of Voivod. Even then, Kosmos' wild guitar and keyboard acrobatics maintain a defined trajectory. Kosmos are at their best when exploring cosmic (natch), cermonial-sounding, krautrock-inspired instrumental vistas... they even do a track called "Krautrock" (no, not a cover of the Faust song). That stuff should appeal to fans of Zombi, ferinstance. Unfortunately there's a few less successful tracks marred by vocals, the band rockin' out for fans of some less hip prog styles of the past... groovy, grungey prog Quebecois isn't totally our thing. So you might hit 'skip' on a track or two, but this definitely has its moments.
In other words, Slapp Happy. "Camera" originated as an opera comissioned for TV, broadcast 1993. Singer Dagmar Krause stars "as a lone individual figure struggling against a nightmare of bureaucratic intrusion." With The Balanescu Quartet among other additional musicians. (Caveat: it's pretty mediocre, we'd recommended it primarily to Slapp Happy completists.)
It makes perfect sense that Bureau B has released this new album by Kreidler, if you were to hear this without having any idea who it was, and you were told it was a long lost early '80s electronic proto-techno exploration by Moebius and members of Neu!, you would have no reason NOT to believe it. These are dark, motorik, trance inducing sounds at their best. More than any of their modern day German peers, Kreidler really have been the ones to build on what their krautrock forefathers and mothers (don't forget Deutsche Wertabreit!) laid down the blueprints for. Mixing their instrumentation and electronics with organic ease, the album flows start to finish with a late night K-hole seedy sensation. Kind of like Villalabos remixing Jonas Reinhardt, Arp, or White Rainbow.
You can hear echoes of Cluster deep in these tracks as you can tell Kreidler have gained much inspiration from albums of theirs like Zukerzeit and especially the Moebius/Beerbohm outing Double Cut. We could also see folks who have been digging lots of the John Carpenter/Goblin inspired sounds by folks like Zombi, Umberto, Xander Harris, Black Devil Disco Club, and The Oscillation getting way into Tank. The live drumming really helps fuel the record and the undercurrents of such a dark and sinister soundworld have drawn us so deep into this recording. This is shaping up to be our favorite Kreidler outing yet!
Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo recommended this to us: another Finnish band that operates in the in-between realm of rock, improv, jazz, and prog. Kroko are an all-instrumental basso/perkussio/kitara trio featuring the guitarist from Bad Vugum recording artists Deep
Finland's Ektro Records label (run by Jussi from Circle/Pharaoh Overlord as you may know) would have us believe that this four-song ep is one from the vaults, supposedly a reissue of singles tracks recorded back in '83 by the mysterious metal entity known as Krypt Axeripper. Obscure cult '80s metal, eh? Well it looks like it: it's got a suitable logo, fantastical n' scary artwork, and the cd booklet even reproduces the labels from the "original" vinyl release of the tracks "Battle Of The Axehammer" and "Possessed (By Trees)". Wait a sec, "Battle Of The Axehammer"? Isn't that also the title of the live Pharaoh Overlord album? Indeed it is, and we're about 99.666 percent sure that "Krypt Axeripper" is in fact the heavy metal alter ego of our friend Jussi! Playing guitars, bass, synths, and singing, Axeripper is joined by "Rattfinder" on drums, who from the sound of it is probably one of Jussi's colleagues in Circle...
And of course, as with *anything* Circle-related, no matter what the concept, it's got that hypnotic Circle-sound at its base. In fact, we'd say that there's stuff on Circle's Sunrise or Pharaoh Overlord 4 that's actually way more metal than the songs here. Yes, they're all got a bunch of very metal (and crudely catchy) guitar riffing going on, albeit ramshackle and lo-fi. But then there's the vocals, which despite lyrics about Lucifer, have a very woozy, weirdly crooned, eccentrically pop quality to them, pitched high in a much more gentle way than a real metal screecher would do. And the guitar solos -- those are all totally psychedelic, Floydian/Frippian washes, really nice as well. And the drums, we mentioned, not metal at all. Too wimpy and motorikally rhythmic. So it's a truly unique and amusing mix, and we LOVE it. Sure the vocals come across as a bit silly at first, but they're actually pretty cool when you really listen, and it's impressive how the vocal parts are arranged, with various lead and backing vocals interwoven, all sung by Mr. Axeripper hisownself.
False metal? More like freak metal. Krypt Axeripper may be fake (and funny) but we're still fans for real. It's interesting how in trying to make a pastiche of heavy metal music (if that's really what he was trying to do...), Jussi came up with something that, if we had to compare it to an actual metal record, reminds us of Voivod's most controversially "alternative" album, the college radio confusional Angel Rat from 1991. We also appreciate that this experiment was kept to just 11 minutes, four amazing, strange songs, not overdoing it, just enough to give his inner metalfan a chuckle -- and to get us to keep hitting play again and again and again on this wacked-out quartet of relaxed, quasi-metallic tracks. Krypt Axeripper seriously (or maybe not-so-seriously) rules!
SUNNO)))-worshippers alert! 1/2 of that drone metal behemoth, our pal Stephen O'Malley (who has also piloted or participated in such units as Khanate, Burning Witch, Ginnungagap, Teeth Of The Lions Rule The Divine, Thorr's Hammer, Fungal Hex, Lotus Eaters, etc.) has travelled to Europe to collaborate with Austrian experimental digital noise artist Peter "Pita" Rehberg! They're calling themselves KTL because the music they made is to be the soundtrack to some sort of stage piece called Kindertotenlieder by performance artist Gisele Vienne and novelist Dennis Cooper ("Closer") due to debut at a festival in France next year. Judging from the music, not to mention the people involved, we imagine it's gonna be beautiful, but also somehow disturbing and dark... This cd certainly is.
It starts off with the 24 minute drone "Estranged", blissful and spooky piece that builds towards its end to noisier heights, threatening the storms to come on this album. And yes, the four parts of "Forest Floor" that take up the main, middle part of the disc are a harrowing journey indeed, into a buzzing, claustrophobic realm of dangerous digital sonics and heavy drone, like SUNNO)))'s lugubrious riffage mixed with the glitchy crunch of Pita -- which is what it is, of course! Not for the faint of heart. Part four, in particular, sounds like a doomed prop engine airplane rumbling over a dark forest landscape from some black metal album cover, at night...
Finally O'Malley and Rehberg wind things up with the quieter (but still creepy) 13 minutes of "Snow", a softly pulsing, detailed improv exploration of lowercase sounds... Very nice!
Let's hope KTL isn't just a one-off collaboration, we'd like to hear more from these two! Their mastery of minimalist ambient music, electronic glitchology and Earthy guitar sludge make a fine sipping brew.
A note for all you object fetishizing consumerist completist types, be forewarned that there will eventually also be a vinyl version of this on the Aurora Borealis label, a double LP limited to 500 copies... we can take preorders now...
We're always on about '70s prog. Well what about prog in the '80s? Here's a nice example, though it's from the very early in the decade (recorded 1980, released 1981) so it's practically '70s anyway. A rather obscure Swedish outfit called Kultivator, whose sole album Barndomens Stigar (which boasts a b&w engraving on the cover by none other than conceptual artist & experimental musician Leif Elggren) blends the quirky herky jerky of prog complexity with blissful melody, tilting at times towards the twee whilst menacingly muscle-flexing at others. There's sizzling instrumental solo sections, and also much in the way of delightful female vocals (mostly wordless ba-ba-ba's).
Kultivator were a quartet, with lots of Fender Rhodes electric piano, as well as other organ and synth keyboards. Also recorder and/or flute. And on occasional backing vocals, a boy's choir. Yup, very proggy indeed. Armchair prog percussionists are provided with their fair share of air-drumming opportunities, percolating energetically as the drumming here does!
All those keyboards create a moody, slightly jazzistic sound which reminds us a bit of the brilliant Bo Hansson, '70s Swedish prog royalty. There's also a definite Magma influence at work (the thick bass riffing and martial drumming in the middle of "Kara Jord" for instance, leading some to go so far as to label Kultivator a genuine "zeuhl" band), and you'll hear hints of traditional Scandinavian folk music as well. Further reference points: fellow Swedes Samla Mammas Manna and Kebnekajse, also '70s UK prog like Genesis and Gentle Giant, RIO a la Henry Cow, and specifically Canterbury groups like Soft Machine, among others. Guess that's what happens when you make prog in 1980, with a whole previous decade of genius from which to draw inspiration! Although Kultivator, um, certainly cultivated their own unique spin on what came before. We'd also say this is a good one for folks who enjoyed the modern day Swedish prog of Gosta Berlings Saga, reviewed here last year.
This brand-new reissue on the Mellotronen label features three bonus tracks added to the original LP's eight cuts, plus a whole extra bonus disc, called Waiting Paths, featuring four songs recorded by the now-reunited band in 2006. Since they already seemed a bit "out of time" (& we don't mean rhythmically!) even back in '81, it's no surprise that this more recent material sounds like a more modern Kultivator... but not that much more modern. Also included in this nice digipacked reissue, a big booklet with vintage photos and lengthy liner notes. Prog-lovin' AQ customers, check this out!
